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Code Orange

  • c 2005
  • Author: Caroline B. Cooney
  • AR Reading Level
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  • Summary - Code Orange is about a teen boy who lives in New York City whose name is Mitchell "Mitty" Blake and he is care-free, and doesn't worry much about his grades or school. His biology teacher Mr. Lynch assigns a report on an infectious disease. Mitty has no idea what virus he should research, but when his parents take him to their home in the countryside of Connecticut and find old medical books from 1899, Boston, he discovers something that will change his life forever. He finds an old envelope containing scabs from variola major (a severe form of smallpox) from an epidemic in 1902. He inhales dust from the scabs which have crumbled as he handles them, without thinking about the consequences. Through the course of the book he begins to think that he has actually acquired smallpox and has the symptoms, which leads to him posting questions online about smallpox.